Moby Dick: or, the White Whale eBook

“See you this?” and withdrawing it from
the folds that had hidden it, he held up a white arm
of sperm whale bone, terminating in a wooden head
like a mallet.

“Man my boat!” cried Ahab, impetuously,
and tossing about the oars near him—­“Stand
by to lower!”

In less than a minute, without quitting his little
craft, he and his crew were dropped to the water,
and were soon alongside of the stranger. But
here a curious difficulty presented itself. In
the excitement of the moment, Ahab had forgotten that
since the loss of his leg he had never once stepped
on board of any vessel at sea but his own, and then
it was always by an ingenious and very handy mechanical
contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and a thing not
to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a
moment’s warning. Now, it is no very easy
matter for anybody—­ except those who are
almost hourly used to it, like whalemen—­
to clamber up a ship’s side from a boat on the
open sea; for the great swells now lift the boat high
up towards the bulwarks, and then instantaneously
drop it half way down to the kelson. So, deprived
of one leg, and the strange ship of course being altogether
unsupplied with the kindly invention, Ahab now found
himself abjectly reduced to a clumsy landsman again;
hopelessly eyeing the uncertain changeful height he
could hardly hope to attain.

It has before been hinted, perhaps, that every little
untoward circumstance that befell him, and which indirectly
sprang from his luckless mishap, almost invariably
irritated or exasperated Ahab. And in the present
instance, all this was heightened by the sight of
the two officers of the strange ship, leaning over
the side, by the perpendicular ladder of nailed cleets
there, and swinging towards him a pair of tastefully-ornamented
man-ropes; for at first they did not seem to bethink
them that a one-legged man must be too much of a cripple
to use their sea bannisters. But this awkwardness
only lasted a minute, because the strange captain,
observing at a glance how affairs stood, cried out,
“I see, I see!—­ avast heaving there!
Jump, boys, and swing over the cutting-tackle.”

As good luck would have it, they had had a whale alongside
a day or two previous, and the great tackles were
still aloft, and the massive curved blubber-hook,
now clean and dry, was still attached to the end.
This was quickly lowered to Ahab, who at once comprehending
it all, slid his solitary thigh into the curve of
the hook (it was like sitting in the fluke of an anchor,
or the crotch of an apple tree), and then giving the
word, held himself fast, and at the same time also
helped to hoist his own weight, by pulling hand-over-hand
upon one of the running parts of the tackle.
Soon he was carefully swung inside the high bulwarks,
and gently landed upon the capstan head. With
his ivory arm frankly thrust forth in welcome, the
other captain advanced, and Ahab, putting out his
ivory leg, and crossing the ivory arm (like two sword-fish
blades) cried out in his walrus way, “Aye, aye,
hearty! let us shake bones together!—­an
arm and a leg!—­ an arm that never can shrink,
d’ye see; and a leg that never can run.
Where did’st thou see the White Whale?—­how
long ago?”